Joseph Javier Perla

In high school, there was a friend of mine who would send out this very cheery holiday email every year. I remember I loved to receive this little card from her. I also remember how I love to receive little warm random greetings from strangers. When I got the idea to send out a holiday greeting to my friends, to see how they are doing, I thought about it more. What if I could send out the holiday cheer to more people? So, I looked online and figured how to use the princeton.edu main site to reach out to a lot of my fellow Princetonians. I crafted a very brief message, and I attached a link to a surprising and cute little YouTube clip. Then, I made a program to send out the emails on New Year’s.

I expected to receive replies from my friends, so I could reply back. They did, of course, and I’m happy to catch up with them. However, I also received hundreds and hundreds of replies from my other fellow tigers, strangers. I didn’t expect replies, but I’m glad some did. Every reply was positive, some very positive:

Thanks! That video was really cool. Happy New Year to you too!

Sweet! I appreciate the holiday cheer!

hahaha, thanks man

Happy New Year to you too! nice video, the cat looks a bit like mine !

Each one brought a big smile to my face. Most people appreciated the video and understood that I was just a fellow tiger sending a random warm greeting. But, I also received a few dozen replies asking, basically, “who is this?” I realized I left my message too brief; I didn’t explain clearly the scope and purpose. For example,

I think maybe you sent your new years wishes to the wrong person? But this video is amazing all the same. Especially that he lets his cat knock over the first domino.

I replied individually apologizing for my mistake and hoping it didn’t cause any them trouble. I don’t want confusion, I want smiles :). Some of the re-replies really got me,

Well that’s awesome–I like to receive random little greetings as well so I appreciate it I hope you had a fantastic break and uhhhh….now it’s time to get back to work!!

and especially,

In that case thank u so much, u did brighten my day!

So overall, I’m really glad I sent this out. There was actually, however, exactly one negative response from one guy. He used the f-word in a short angry message, concerned about spamming. I thought about his perspective, and I understood where he was coming from. I replied, and so did he, and in the end he calmly showed himself to be a good concerned guy. He just wanted to make sure his and others’ Princeton e-mails stayed Princeton-related. I was surprised, but I can see why he might get annoyed by the message. I understand where he’s coming from. Because of his reaction, I will not do this again. I’m not in the business of causing even a tiny bit of pain to one person even if it brings a lot of smiles to more people. There are other ways to spread cheer.

He also said that a few people took it negatively and were negatively talking on some listservs about it. There was one other re-reply where the person mentioned at first thinking the message was “sketchy” (women aren’t usually called sketchy, if I happened to be a woman, would these same people react in the same way? interesting sociological question…). I think that’s because I wasn’t clear in the message that I was sending it to many of my fellow tigers, both friends and strangers. Again, unfortunately, far too curt a message.

I hope that those who initially took it negatively, I hope they eventually see my intention, reread the warm greeting, smile, and have a wonderful 2008.